whitewash by congratulating us on the "grand fact of our noble national
theory," but to a discerning mind the consolation is not very consoling.
The trouble is that the sins with which America is charged by Mr.
Muirhead are flagrant violations of our noble national theory. So far as
his charges are true, they are a denial that the American political and
economic organization is accomplishing the results which its traditional
claims require. If, as Mr. Muirhead charges, Americans permit the
existence of economic slavery, if they grind the face of the poor, if
they exploit the weak and distribute wealth unjustly, if they allow
monopolies to prevail and laws to be unequal, if they are disgracefully
ignorant, politically corrupt, commercially unscrupulous, socially
snobbish, vulgarly boastful, and morally coarse,--if the substance of
the foregoing indictment is really true, why, the less that is said
about a noble national theory, the better. A man who is a sturdy sinner
all the week hardly improves his moral standing by attending church on
Sunday and professing a noble Christian theory of life. There must
surely be some better way of excusing our sins than by raising aloft a
noble theory of which these sins are a glaring violation.

I have quoted from Mr. Muirhead, not because his antithetic
characterization of American life is very illuminating, but because of
the precise terms of his charges against America. His indictment is
practically equivalent to the assertion that the American system is not,
or at least is no longer, achieving as much as has been claimed on its
behalf. A democratic system may permit undefiled the existence of many
sins and abuses, but it cannot permit the exploitation of the ordinary
man by means of unjust laws and institutions. Neither can this
indictment be dismissed without argument. When Mr. Muirhead's book was
written sixteen years ago, the majority of good Americans would
assuredly have read the charge with an incredulous smile; but in the